The present invention relates to ice dispensers, and in particular to an improved dispenser for flaked ice.
In the food and beverage service industries it is desirable to provide means for expeditiously dispensing of quantity of ice, for example into a glass, to facilitate service of ice water and cold beverages to customers, or for use on a buffet table to cool prepared foods. Conventionally, the means comprises an ice dispenser, which for commercial applications usually includes a hopper for storing a quantity of crushed, cracked, flaked or cubed ice, an icemaker for manufacturing ice for the hopper, and an agitator for the mass of ice to prevent congealing or agglomeration thereof in order to maintain the ice particles in discrete free flowing form and to facilitate dispensing ice. An opening at the bottom of the hopper enables ice to be removed from the hopper, for example by a dispensing unit which automatically provides a measured quantity of ice or which continuously provides ice for as long as it is actuated.
Heretofore, much effort has been expended to provide various kinds of knives and blades in a hopper for particulate ice to prevent the ice from congealing or agglomerating, to maintain the ice particles in discrete free flowing form, and to facilitate dispensing of ice. In one type of dispenser, a rotating cutter equipped with knives or blades is supposed to slash its way through a stationary mass of small particles of ice to maintain them in discrete form. In another, the ice is rotated as a mass in a circular hopper and the hopper is equipped with vertical and radial knives or blades to slash through the rotating mass. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,393,839, the latter type of device has been equipped with stationary blades of such character as to impart undulating or tremor-like movements to the ice both vertically and radially to maintain the ice as individual free flowing particles. In addition, hoppers of noncircular designs have been used with such knives and blades to enhance the undulating movement imparted to the ice particles.
Although prior dispensers are well suited for dispensing relatively large particles of ice, such as cubed ice, they are ill equipped to dispense flaked ice. The difficulty resides in the fact that flaked ice is comprised of relatively small ice particles, such that conventional agitators, comprising knives and blades, tend to slice through the mass of ice rather than rotate or move it. Therefore, the agitators do not impart movement to the mass of flaked ice in a manner to maintain the ice as individual free flowing particles, and the situation is made worse when hoppers of noncircular cross section are used, since such hoppers, although enhancing undulation of large particles of ice, impede rotation of flaked ice and enable the agitator to even more easily cut through the ice without moving it.